Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got by Jay Abraham

Summary

Jay Abraham shares his methodology to grow your business by (1) maximizing what you have and (2) multiplying that maximum. Great ideas and checklists but instead of reading this book you’re better off watching his YouTube seminars (which are great). 

Key Takeaways

• Two categories of income-increasing strategies:
  • Maximizing what you have
  • Multiplying your maximum
• Think: highest and best use of your time, money and effort. 
• Always put your clients’ needs ahead of your own. When you master that your success will naturally follow.
• Accept that people will work harder not to look foolish than they will work to gain an advantage.
• You need to create maximum real and perceived advantage in your clients’ and employers’ eyes and mind at all times.
• It’s counterproductive to adopt a USP if you cannot fulfill the promise.

What I got out of it

I came across Jay Abraham on a podcast interview, fell in love with his consulting style and binge-watched most of his material on his YouTube channel. 

This book covers most of Jay’s methodology to grow a business (including his “Strategy of Preeminence”) and one can use the chapter headers as a checklist for his/her own business. Simply work your way down until you find an area that you haven’t implemented or maximized in your business.

That said, the book is much longer than it needs to be. Jay includes examples and case studies to illustrate his points, but I think anyone is better off watching one of his longer (2+ hour) videos on YouTube. His back-and-forth consulting style in those videos provides more value in a shorter amount of time than this book, in my opinion.

Handy as an introduction or reference guide to Jay’s methodology but lacks the dynamism the videos provide. As this book was written in 2000, you’ll have to figure out yourself how to adapt the principles to the internet age.

My biggest takeaway is Jay’s strategy to first focus on maximizing what you have, then multiplying your maximum.

Summary Notes

Your Flight Plan – Where You’re Headed

You are surrounded by simple, obvious solutions that can increase your income, profit and success. The problem is, you just don’t see them.

Two categories of income-increasing strategies:

• Maximizing what you have
• Multiplying your maximum

Why do your clients buy from you instead of your competitors? 

If you don’t know the answer, that means one of two things:

• You offer a client advantages or benefits, but you’ve never identified them yourself.
• You offer that client no unique advantage and you’re just lucky.

Determine the most powerful benefit or advantage you can possibly offer an existing or future client so it will be irrational for them to choose to do business with anyone but you or your company. How to do that:

• You identify what advantage or result your clients want the most. 
• Position your product or service as having a unique benefit they cannot get elsewhere. 
• Incorporate the fact that you are now offering them this unique advantage or benefit in everything you say and everything you do. Educate them so they see, appreciate and want to seize that advantage.

Your goal is to eliminate as much of the risk in the transaction for your client. When you take away the risk, you lower the barrier to action and eliminate the primary obstacle to buying.

Clients will take advantage of this risk reversal strategy and very seldom ask for reimbursement. But the offer will serve you 100% of the time.

Before Henry Ford would hire anyone for an important position, he would have lunch with them. If the potential employee would salt the food before tasting it, Mr. Ford would not hire the person. The reason? Salting the food before tasting it indicated the person would implement a plan before testing it – ergo, no job. 

Test everything.

Find someone already selling to the clients you want to be reaching. They sell something that:

• Goes before
• Goes along with
• Follows the product or service that you sell to people. 

Your product does not compete with theirs, but complements it.

A lot of money and time spent on advertising and marketing can be saved by developing 1+ referral systems. Easy start: ask clients for referrals. How:

• Appreciate and praise them.
• Ask if they know others with similar values and morals.
• Extend a risk-free, obligation-free offer (consult without expectation).

It can cost a small fortune to acquire a new client – but it costs almost nothing to gain back an old client. 

Clients stop buying for three basic reasons: 

1. They stop temporarily and never get around to dealing with you again.
2. They became dissatisfied.
3. The client’s situation has changed to the point they no longer can benefit from your product.

Recognize that over 80% of all lost clients didn’t leave for an irreparable reason and you can take action to get many of them back. When they do come back, they tend to become one of your best, most frequent and loyal client groups. They also turn into your best single source of referrals.

Sales letters are the most powerful prelude to telephone marketing efforts. Sending a sales letter ahead of a phone call can increase the effectiveness of the call itself by 1000%.

Great Expectations 

Breakthroughs come from the correct mindset and being opportunity-focused.

Stretch yourself and examine subjects, industries and markets you’ve never been interested in before. Why? Because you’ll get fresh new perspectives, ideas, and insights into segments of the buying market you’ve never thought about before. And you’ll start seeing the connection. Ask yourself powerful questions about how other people use things, do things, sell things, deliver things, service things, make things, compete and prosper.

Think: highest and best use of your time, money and effort. Highest and best. Always highest and best!

To produce the maximum number of breakthroughs you should focus your thinking on these objectives that your breakthrough ideas should be designed to achieve. 

• Always discover what the hidden opportunity is in every situation. 
• Try and uncover at least one cash windfall for your business or employer every three months.
• Engineer maximum success into every action you take or decision you make. 
• Build a business breakthrough foundation based upon multiple streams of idea generation instead of a single idea source. 
• One of your breakthrough goals is to always make you, your business or product special, unique and more advantageous in your client’s eyes. 
• The more value or wealth you can create for your client, the greater the power of that breakthrough. 
• A breakthrough’s purpose is to help you or your business maximize personal or organizational leverage in every commitment of action, investment, time effort opportunity or energy you make. 
• Breakthroughs increase in direct proportion to the amount of networking, brainstorming and masterminding you do with like-minded, success-driven people outside your industry. 
• Your goal in creating breakthroughs is to use ideas to create more value for others.
• Breakthroughs fuel growth thinking. 
• Growth thinking seeds breakthroughs…..the two go hand-in-hand. 
• The best breakthroughs take away risk or resistance from the other side. So it’s easier to say yes than no.
• Employ as many success practices of others outside your field or industry by investigating then modeling their philosophies and methods.

How Can You Go Forward If You Don’t Know Which Way You’re Facing? 

50 questions to gain insight into the strengths and weaknesses of your business or career. Answer the questions on a company and a personal career level.

1. What initially got me started in my business (what motivation, occurrence, etc.)? 
2. When I first started, where did my clients come from (what process, method or action did I use)? 
3. Why did clients originally buy from me? 
4. Why do clients buy from me now? 
5. What primary method of generating clients was used to build my business? 
6. Which of my marketing or sales efforts brought in the bulk of my sales/clients? What percentage of my business comes from this? 
7. Do I test the various aspects of my marketing and selling activities to make sure they’re producing the best and most profitable results? 
8. How well-connected or how involved am I with my clients at the sales or transaction level (do I still sometimes take orders, or sell or follow-up)?
9. What ongoing sales efforts do I personally perform today? How do these functions differ from those I performed when I started my business? 
10. Where do my clients come from specifically (demographics)? 
11. Would I rather attract more new clients or garner more money from my existing clients, and why? 
12. Who else benefits from my success, excluding my clients, my employees and my family members? 
13. How many of my suppliers would be motivated to help me grow my business more because it will directly benefit them at a very high level? Who are they? 
14. When I create a new client for my business or profession, who else have I directly created a new client for? 
15. Describe completely what my business does (what I sell, how I sell it, and who I sell to by industry, commercial category or specific niche). 
16. What is my business philosophy as it relates to my clients? 
17. How have my methods for doing business, or the product or service line(s) I market changed since the inception of my business? 
18. What are my sales per employee? Is that above, below, or equal to my industry average? 
19. What is the “lifetime value” of my typical client (i.e., how much revenue will he/she generate for me over the entire period he/she does business with my company)?
20. What is the biggest client complaint about my company, and how does my company address this problem? 
21. What is my Unique Selling Proposition or USP (Why do my clients buy from me – what is it about my product and/or service that distinguishes me from me competition? Do I have more than one USP for different product/service lines or segments of my business?) 
22. Is my USP a consistent theme in all of my marketing and sales efforts? If yes, how, and if no, why not? 
23. Briefly describe my marketing program or marketing mix (all the different types of marketing I use and how they interrelate – i.e., sales letters/direct mail, direct sales, yellow pages, spot advertisement, etc.). 
24. Who are my biggest competitors and what do they offer that I do not? 
25. What steps do I take to offset their advantage? Are they working? 
26. What is my competition’s biggest failing, and how do I specifically fill that void? 
27. What do my clients really want (be specific, don’t just answer “a quality product or service”)? How do I know? 
28. Do clients buy from me exclusively or do they also patronize my competitors? What steps can I take to get the main portion of their business? 
29. What’s my market potential (universe) and my current share of that market?
30. What does it cost me to get a new client (i.e., if I ran an advertisement that cost $1,000 and I obtained two new clients, my cost would be $500)? 
31. What is my biggest and best source of new business, and am I doing everything possible to secure this business? 
32. What has been my biggest marketing success to date (defined as a specific promotion, advertising campaign, sales letter, etc.)? 
33. What is my biggest marketing problem or challenge today? Describe it in its entirety as candidly and directly as possible, including personal, financial, and transactional implications it may impose. 
34. How many better ways could I reduce the risk of transaction, lower the barrier of entry or reduce the hurdle for my client to make it easier for that person to do business with me? 
35. After the initial sales, are there systematic, formal methods I use to communicate and resell my clients? 
36. Do I have an adequate supply of client testimonials, and is there a system in place for their capture? Are they written, on audio tape or video tape, and how are they used in my marketing? 
37. Do I actively solicit referral business? 
38. Have I ever tried to reactivate my former clients and non-converted prospects? 
39. Have I ever tried selling a list of my non-converted prospects to my competitors?
40. Do I make consistent efforts to communicate with my clients about what my company is doing to help them? 
41. In what ways do I try to up-sell my clients? 
42. Do I need to make money on first-time buyers, or am I satisfied with only making it on the back-end (reorders)? 
43. Do I ever barter my products, services or assets with other companies in exchange for their products, services or assets? 
44. What kind of guarantee or warranty do I give my clients, and how does it compare with my competitors or what the industry at large offers? 
45. What is my client attrition rate? 
46. How do I capture the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all my clients and prospects? Do I use them in my marketing programs? 
47. What is my average order amount, and what are the steps I can take to increase it? 
48. How much is the initial sale to a new client worth? 
49. Do I use a list broker? If not, where go I get my names? 
50. Do I rent my client names to other companies? If so, what were the results?

Your Business Soul – The Strategy of Preeminence 

The Strategy of Preeminence is the ability to always put your clients’ needs ahead of your own. When you master that your success will naturally follow.

Whatever you do, if you focus on giving value and advice instead of manipulating and maneuvering, you win over many more prospects, clients, bosses, colleagues and friends. And you will be rewarded in ways you never dreamed.

Accept that people will work harder not to look foolish than they will work to gain an advantage. Become their trusted advisor, their friend. Treat them the same way you would want to be treated.

A successful business starts not with just a great idea or product. Rather, it starts with the desire to provide a solution to another’s problem.

Break Even Today, Break The Bank Tomorrow  

Acquiring clients at a break-even or slight loss and making substantial profits on back-end repurchasing is one of the most overlooked and underutilized methods of client growth and generation available to you. 

If your business or practice is one that has a high probability of clients coming back to repurchase from you the same or different products or services, you owe it to that business or practice to do everything within your power to get clients into the buying stream as quickly and easily as you possibly can. 

Until you understand exactly how much combined profit a client represents to your business for the life of that relationship, you can’t begin to know how much time, effort and expense you can afford to invest to acquire that client in the first place. You need to know the lifetime value of your clients (or your clients’ marginal net worth).

The goal isn’t to just cut the price of the first purchase. The goal is to make that first purchase so much more appealing that people find it harder to say “no” than “yes… please!” While reducing the price of your product or service is the most common and obvious way to get the first sale, there are other powerful ways to obtain first-time buyers:

Let’s say your product or service sells for $200 and your cost is $100.

• You could keep the price at $200 and use the $100 as “spiff” or extra selling incentives to your salespeople.
• You could also use that same $100 to buy more of your product or service.
• You could take the $100 and use it to buy other complementary products or services (at wholesale) to package and add to your product or service without raising the $200 price – so the value of your offer becomes far greater and thus more attractive. 
• You could use that $100 to invest in advertising, sales letters, additional salespeople, free seminars or any other marketing and selling programs. 
• You could rent promotional space in someone’s store or trade show booth and pay them the $100 for every new client you gain through their facility.

Vive La Difference 

In business and career, standing out more favorably in the prospect’s eyes is a big reason why clients and employers will choose you over your competitor. The more clearly you telegraph what makes you the better choice (offering more benefits, advantages, and bottom line payoff), the more often they’ll choose you over your competition. You need to create maximum real and perceived advantage in your clients’ and employers’ eyes and mind at all times.

Whatever your USP stands for, you do at all times. It’s counterproductive to adopt a USP if you cannot fulfill the promise.

How do you pick a USP? First identify which needs are going unfulfilled within your industry, such as: 

1. A broad selection. 
2. Big discounts. 
3. Advice and assistance. 
4. Convenience (i.e. location, fully stocked shelves, immediate delivery). 
5. Top-of-the-line products or services. 
6. Speedy service. 
7. Services above and beyond the basics
8. A longer and more comprehensive warranty or guarantee than the norm. 
9. Any other distinct advantage. 

The point is to focus on the one niche, need, or gap that is most sorely lacking – provided you can keep the promise you make. 

Whenever a client needs the type of product you sell, your USP should bring you or your company immediately to mind. Clearly conveying the USP through your marketing and business performance will make business success inevitable. 

Boil down your USP to its bare essence.

Write a one-paragraph statement of your new USP. 

• At first, you will have trouble expressing it tightly and specifically. 
• It may take two or three paragraphs or more. That’s okay. 
• Ruthlessly edit away the generalities, and focus on a crisp, clear statement that promises the most you could possibly offer. 
• Hack away excess verbiage until you have a clearly defined Unique Selling Proposition that a client or prospect can immediately seize upon.

Integrate your USP into every form of your marketing, sales call and communication with prospects and clients. 

Be sure you and your team can clearly and powerfully express your USP in 60 seconds. Then compellingly state how it benefits the prospect and why it’s important. Furnish your prospects with plenty of examples of how you honestly deliver your USP.

How can you ensure that you are in the hearts and minds of your clients after the sale? Here are a few good approaches: 

• Immediately following the sale – write, e-mail, phone, or visit your clients. 
• During this follow-up effort, make sure the clients feel important and special, and that their initial purchases are “resold.” 
• Repeat your USP and remind the clients how it helped them make their purchasing decision.

Remember the following principles when extending a special offer: 

• The client should see the offer as a logical extension of your basic USP. 
• If your USP is service, your preferred promotions will be service-based rather than price-based. A special offer of your basic service, or one year of free consulting or assistance not normally given, for example.
• Make it clear that this offer is only available to current clients.
• Don’t cut corners by not providing a better price or higher quality product, longer guarantee, or added services.

Action steps 

1. Make a list of the real benefits or advantages that you already offer a client or employer. 
2. List the benefits and advantages your competition offers them that you don’t. 
3. List the ways you could improve upon your competitors’ unique advantages. 
4. List any niche advantages you already possess. For instance, the ease of application of your product or service or your location.
5. Now make a list of your most important suppliers, vendors, retailers and businesses in your professional life. Focus on the one reason why you like or prefer dealing with each of these entities over their competition. Reduce that main reason or benefit down to one sentence or less. 
6. See if you can adopt that same benefit or advantage to your business or career. 
7. Think about the biggest successes you know or see in any field. What’s their biggest single benefit (their USP) to their client market? Is there a direct application here for you? 
8. When you understand, start focusing on and promoting the unique advantages, or benefits, you can offer your clients or employer, you’ll see results.

Make ‘Em An Offer They Can’t Refuse 

One of the biggest “competitive-edge” advantages you’ll ever gain is to always make it easier for the client to say “yes” than it is for them to say “no.” You do it by taking away the financial, psychological or emotional risk factors that are attached (stated or unstated) to any decision-making proposition you ever ask a client to make.

When you take away the risk to your prospect or client, you lower the barrier to action thus eliminating the primary obstacle to buying. 

Assume the risk in every transaction you have with your clients. Let them know that, if they are ever dissatisfied, you will give them their money back, re-do the job at no charge or whatever else it takes to demonstrate your total, passionate commitment to their satisfaction.

With a “Better-than-risk-free” guarantee (BTRF) you are acknowledging and rewarding the client for the value of both his/her time and faith expended in favoring you with his/her purchasing decision. You compensating your clients for their dissatisfaction.

The primary reason people don’t buy is that they don’t want to look bad in the eyes of their peers, and they don’t want to make a mistake.

Usually a 60-day guarantee will outproduce 30 days by 20%-100%. Test it yourself and see what a boost it gives. A full year or even longer usually beats 60 or 90 days. 

The more specifically you tell people what “satisfaction” looks like, the more compelled they become to act in order to receive that benefit for themselves.

The clearer, stronger and more specific the guarantee, the more credibility an impact it will have on a prospect or client.

Action step

• Look at your business, products, services or employment skills and talents. 
• Make a complete list of every obstacle to your clients or employers that might prevent them from purchasing, dealing with, or choosing you over your competition.
• Break them into the following categories:
  • Financial reasons: Both the initial cost or expense of choosing you. And the potential financial loss if the transaction doesn’t work out. 
  • Emotional: How bad the client or employer would look or feel if his purchase or commitment to you fails to perform. 
  • Measurability reasons: Can it be measured and evaluated to show the tangible impact you or your offering could or should have on the client’s life, business, or career? 
• Ask yourself what the real “downside” is in offering the client that product or service or your own employment services on a risk-free basis. Or even a better than risk-free basis.

Would You Like The Left Shoe, Too? 

Are you doing all you can to give your clients all the benefits and choices they could be getting from you and would pay for?

Clients don’t buy products or services; they buy end results. They buy it because they believe it will help them achieve a greater sense of:

• Convenience
• Safety
• Pleasure
• Economy
• Accomplishment 
• Self-esteem

Making add-ons work for you:

• Write the names of your three best-selling products or services. 
• Add the “end result” clients or patients desire when they buy these items. 
• Alongside the names of those items, list some of the ways in which you might increase the value and benefit of those goods and services to your clients by adding a product or service.

A short list of proven ways to come up with your own valuable add-on: 

1. Observe what your clients do before they buy your goods or services. Can you provide that to them for a fee?
2. Watch what people do with your service or product after they buy it, and offer to do it for them for a fee.
3. See what people buy to go with your product or service in the pursuit of their end result. Make it available to them through you.
4. Ask yourself how you would make a client’s end result even more complete.

Take the idea that you like best for an add-on product or service and offer it to ten of your best clients. Take your second favorite add-on and offer it to another ten. Try four or five ideas this way and you’ll get a quick indication of what offers the best value to your clients and business opportunity for you.

Getting down to your business

• Take out that pencil and paper again with the names of your three best-selling products or services. 
• Write down next to each product or service the amount that your good client buys from you, on average, in each transaction. 
• Just ask yourself, “What quantity or frequency choice would give these wonderful people the greatest end result and the greatest incentive to buy more?” 
• A few specific activities:
  1. Consider offering three times the average volume being purchased now for 2½ times the price.
  2. Package your product or service for a period of time. Try a year’s worth first.
  3. Offer your product or service ‘Til Further Notice with periodic billings
• Write down the names of your ten best clients and, next time they call or come in, offer them your favorite volume option. In fact, try out your offer on a second group of clients who aren’t on your “best” list – and compare the results, list against list.

Give clients three better options and a number of them will choose one of the two additions over their initial intent. Give them superior value in each option you add, and they become benefitted many times more than you do from the process.

Ask yourself – could I take any or all of the products or services I sell and reposition them to be more up-market?

Ask yourself – is there a level of my market more up-scale than the one I’m currently reaching that I should be catering to? And if the answer is “Yes” – which it could be in many cases – all you have to do is try a safe little test and see what happens. Downside is nothing. Upside is tremendous.

Actions steps:

• List all the products and services you sell that produce a greater result for the client when used together or in logical progression. Try offering various combinations, packages, and “upsell” with these. 
• List what I call the cycles of product/service life – all the products or services other people sell that precede, parallel, complement, or follow the use of your product or service. Find the companies who sell all these products or services and see what kind of distribution, outright purchase, or Host Beneficiary deals you can make with each in order to add their items on to your client’s sale. 
• Think of any logical services your client could benefit from after puchasing your product or service – like tech support, extended warranty, annual or semi-annual maintenance, pick up and delivery, etc. Could you provide any of these services to increase the value of your transaction? 
• If you have nothing else you can add, consider offering a larger more deluxe version of your product or service at a greater price.

How You Never Fall Off A Cliff 

A marketing genius is someone who only follows the path that produces the highest and best results or returns for their time, money and effort. Anyone can become it by testing rigorously.

The purpose of testing is to demand maximum performance from every marketing effort.

Never test big if you can test small. 

Once you become more sophisticated in your testing, the next step is to consider the quality of response instead of mere quantity.

Keep tabs on all of your data, such as: 

• Which ad brought in the sale. 
• How many orders a given ad produces. 
• How much money a given ad generates or loses. 
• How much the average order is worth. 
• How much a client or order costs. 
• How much or how many times the client re-orders. 

With A Little Help From My Friends 

Why spend all your time, effort, expense, and credibility-building activity to attract new clients when you can get other people, companies, publications and organizations to get clients for you. 

The goal of all marketing: generate clients and prospects.

To create powerfully profitable Host-Beneficiary relationships:

1. Ask yourself: “Who already has a strong relationship with people to whom I might be able to sell a noncompetitive but related product or service?”
   1. Make a list of products and services that complement, precede or follow your product or service. 
2. Contact those non-competing businesses and ask them to introduce your product or service to their audience. 
3. Supply them with plenty of information on what you sell, and some testimonials attesting to its high quality.
4. Denominate it into terms the host can get enthusiastic about. Use what is called “future pacing.” Project ahead and show your prospective host what the money you pay them or the stream of income it will generate for them could be worth.
5. Take the process to a higher level of leverage. Show them what they can buy with that money and with subsequent money.
6. Instill the fact that the endorser gets most of the benefit from the proposition. It’s a way to market test their leverage with their audience. If right, they can do it with others. If wrong, the los is yours. They benefit either way.

When negotiating the test deal don’t be choosy: you need validation. Get all the documentation you can from the test.

Someone You Should Meet 

You have a moral and business obligation to extend the same superior level of results or benefits you provide to each and every one of your clients, to everyone they hold dear.

Don’t think about the generic aspects of what you do. Focus on your contribution to clients’ lives or business and the ultimate impact that results.

When you change your sense of self worth, you also alter the way you look at your relationships with clients. Look at every client as a valued, lifetime friend. 

You must encourage and develop referrals as often as possible.

A psychiatrist made his business boom by following just one piece of advice: he told his clients that their referrals wouldn’t have to pay for the first session.

Every time you deal with clients diplomatically ask them for client referrals. To set the stage, tell your clients:

• You enjoy doing business with them
• They probably associate with kindred spirits
• You’d like to offer the opportunity of referring their valued and trusted associates to you. Then help the client see a clear picture of who in their lives could benefit most effectively, and naturally, from your services or products. 
• What kind of person or business it might be, where they are, what they are probably doing – and why they’d benefit. 
• Show them what that person or entity would be doing or buying right now so that the picture is vivid. Then extend a totally risk-free, totally obligation-free sales offer. 
• To consult anyone important to that client without expectation of purchase.

The law of consistency: if clients recommend you to someone else, they have also committed themselves.

If you want to optimize any business, then you will have at least 4 to 5 different referral systems.

Before implementing a referral system, you’ll want to know:

1. Who are your ideal prospects? 
2. What is the benefit(s) your ideal prospect wants and needs? 
3. What benefit or result does your competitor(s) provide? What things does he do better than you and worse than you? 
4. What benefit or result do you provide? What things are better and worse than your competitor(s)? 
5. What is the ideal prospect’s biggest problem that is not being met? How could you help him solve it?

Referral System Template: 

1. What are the demographics of your ideal prospects?
2. Who can refer these prospects to you? Who has the clients you want? 
3. Set the stage for getting referrals.
   1. Make sure you have a good or valuable product. If not, improve it. 
   2. Revere what you do. 
   3. Position yourself as different from your competitors. 
   4. Ask your current clients about themselves to show interest. 
   5. Explain that even if the referral does not buy, you provide a valuable service for them by letting them know what they should look for, what they should avoid, what they should expect, what they might overlook, and anything else which could negatively or positively affect the referral. 
   6. Give both logical and emotional reasons why they should give you referrals. 
   7. Offer to give them an incentive for the referral. 
   8. Offer to give their clients a product for free or at a discount and tell them that this is something that the person referring you to them has bought them. 
   9. Offer to give the referral a special incentive. These special incentives could be bonuses, money back guarantees, additional service, a discount, or anything else that has perceived value to the referral. 
   10. Have your client call or directly contact the referral. 
   11. Reciprocity: do/give something for your client first, before asking for referrals. Anything that has perceived value. 
   12. Keep contact with the people who have provided referrals in the past. 
   13. Ask for referrals when clients are most receptive. This could be when they have just bought your product, when you have done something great for them or when something special has happened in their lives.
   14. Don’t be bashful, ask for those referrals. 
   15. Thank your clients for referrals.
4. Help your clients locate the referrals for you. Ask them, “Who do you know who ________?” (Fill in the blank for as many different groups of people and scenarios as possible to jog their memory.)
   1. People they normally interface with
   2. People they think about because of an event 

Referral system example: on the back of business reply envelopes write “If you know of anyone else who would benefit from our products, please give us their name and address and we’ll send them our catalog.” 

The effort it takes to set up a formal referral system is more than worth the time you invest. Referrals will be one of your best and most loyal categories of clients.

The Prodigal Client 

The easiest possible way to increase your client base: regaining your inactive clients.

Most people stop buying from you for one of three reasons: 

1. Something unrelated to you happened in their life or business that caused them to temporarily stop dealing with you.
2. Their last purchase experience was problematic or unsatisfactory and they didn’t tell you.
3. Their situation has changed to the point they no longer benefit from whatever product you sell.

Contacting people who can’t use you anymore, and nobly asking for referrals, has increased the sales of client companies I work with by as much as 50% within months.

By contacting inactive clients you get a wonderful bonus benefit: feedback. Old clients will tell you exactly what they like and dislike about you, your company, your people, products or service. You can’t help but learn all kinds of ways to improve your business. 

Start a policy of communicating regularly and intimately with as many active clients as possible. This will help avoid the misunderstandings, unintentional interruptions in business and lack of attention that open the door to competition.

Your 10,000 Person Sales Department 

Direct mail – any written material that can be used to communicate with prospects and clients – offers overlooked, undervalued and little-known applications that can easily boost your success in business.

When people call cold or visit cold, they’re introducing an idea for the first time. There are many negative issues you have to overcome. Let your sales letter prepare the audience instead.

With direct mail, follow the “rules” that have been proven by others in the industry. Don’t reinvent the wheel.

Once you’ve mastered direct mail, you possess a potent marketing tool that can stretch your marketing abilities many times over. In a surprisingly large number of cases direct mail does better dollar-for-dollar than salespeople.

To put direct mail to work:

1. Identify the most probable audience for the single most attractive product you offer.
2. Go out and rent 5,000 or 1,000s of names from a list that you can afford and can access.
3. Construct your offer. Find the least expensive way to get the maximum number of people to raise their hand and say, “Yes, I am interested.” What this means can differ by product line.
   1. Send a free sample
   2. Visit
   3. Call
   4. If none are practical, emphasize the lowest-priced, easiest-to-understand and most beneficial result your product offers.

A sales letter is nothing more than a conversation between two friends.

What your sales letter should contain: 

• A powerful headline
• Show clear and distinct advantages in the body
• Prove or validate your claim of benefits or advantages through factual examples – comparisons, analysis, testimonials or credentials.
• Persuade the reader to reach out and seize the advantage you promise. 
• Motivate the reader to act, respond, order, write, come in or send back the coupon.

Headline

Offer the reader a desirable reward for reading the letter. 

• Tell him how he can gain, save, profit, achieve or accomplish something through your product or service. 
• Show how the product or service will increase mental, physical, financial, social, spiritual or intellectual well-being, satisfaction or fulfillment. 
• Show the reader how to avoid, reduce or eliminate problems, risks, difficulties, worries or fears by using your product or service.

Body

• Begin by clearly disclosing a single powerful advantage. 
• Then show more progressive advantages throughout the letter. 
• When you write the body copy, you are wearing two hats. You want to sell, but you must also put yourself in the shoes of the reader. 
• Write the entire letter from the client’s side.
• View your product as if seeing it for the very first time. This is important because your letter will be the first exposure many readers have to your product or service.

When you present the facts, begin with the statement of basic truth, known and accepted by the reader. By introducing known facts, you create believability for later statements. As you present more facts, your reader will unconsciously say, “The first statements were true, so the others must be.”

Always use specifics instead of generalizations when citing facts.

Tell the reader exactly what to do: 

• “Pick up the phone and call me or our client service order lines.” 
• “Go to our closest location.” 
• “Don’t let another day go by without sending in for this free information. Return the postage-paid reply envelope today.” 
• “Send your order before the sale ends. Mail it today.”

Amplify the request for action with risk transferal: Tell them the risk is all on you. Show the readers they have zero risk or obligation. 

• I ask them to immediately respond to a specific offer totally at my risk. 
• I limit the time and restrict the quantity of the offer, and clearly explain why. 
• I explain in detail the loss of sampling opportunities or free bonuses the reader will lose by failing to respond in time. 
• I provide a better-than-risk-free guarantee that makes it just short of ludicrous not to take me up on my proposition. 
• I tell the reader precisely and in progressive steps exactly how to respond.

Long or short? Make a letter long enough to tell a complete, informative and interesting story.

Fish Where The Fish Are 

Focus your efforts and attention on the markets, prospects, and activities that offer you the highest probability of a payoff and you’ll always do better.

Quantity does not matter in lead generation. Quality and convertibility do.

One of the biggest wastes of time: people who do not qualify the prospects they target. Instead of going after primary prospects, they go after suspects. The difference between a suspect and a prospect is quality.

When you send letters, don’t make them general. Always make them refer to some product, service or process the recipient of that letter can take advantage of and would have a very strong interest in acquiring.

You should concentrate your sales efforts on people who have a history of buying your type of product or service, or who are logically predisposed to what you’re offering.

Ask yourself: “What other industry would normally be selling to my clients?” When you understand what those industries are, then go a little deeper. Define and identify exactly who those people are. By defining and identifying who they are, you’ll know exactly who to write or call and ask for.

The lesson: The right list will connect you with your starving crowd.

ACTION STEPS 

1. Make a complete, comprehensive list of all your clients. 
2. Separate your clients by their various buying patterns or interests.
   1. Which clients buy what category of products or services. 
   2. Which ones buy larger units of sale and buy more frequently. 
   3. Which purchase more of specific categories of products and services or far more specialized applications. 
   4. Note if there are similarities among various buying groups that point to opportunity trends.
3. Are geographical trends, demographic indications, or general, age, family, business type and/or size factors that correlate to specific buying patterns?

Watson, Come Here, I Need You 

The basic telemarketing rules: 

1. Start the process by mail
2. Test before you telemarket
3. Price your offer right
   1. It should cover your wages and costs. A good working ratio: one-third to the telemarketers, one-third for any other expenses, and one-third to you.
4. Stair-step the telemarketing pitch

The best way to sell: learn to ask questions as you talk to prospects. (read The Mom Test for more on this topic)

1. Develop a plan. Before a call, be aware of exactly what it is you want to learn. 
2. Prepare a list of topics to cover. Have a specific question under each topic.
3. Ask the client’s permission to ask questions. 
4. Time questions properly. Avoid making your presentation sound like an interrogation. 
5. Begin with broad questions that relax the prospect and “get the ball rolling.” Then your questions can become more specific as the prospect reveals certain needs and concerns. 
6. Build upon previous answers. Your feedback shows the prospect that you’re listening. 
7. Balance the number and type of questions. 
8. Don’t ask manipulative questions (e.g., “of course you would like to save 60% on your materials’ costs, wouldn’t you?”).
9. Be conversational. Always let the prospect finish talking. Listen carefully.

Big Profits.Com 

The solid strategies that succeed in the physical world also will prove successful in the Internet world.

Using the same strategy of looking to other businesses and industries to find innovations for your business is equally effective when dealing with the Internet.

Manhattan For $29 Worth Of Beads 

Done right, barter gives you:

• The ability to increase your purchasing power by 5-10x
• The effect of having almost unlimited capital

The appeal of barter: 

1. Enjoy up to 80% cash savings on all your purchases. 
2. Acquire needed items with money you’ve already spent. 
3. Finance major purchases interest-free for years, and get the purchaser to carry the paper at a discount.

As long as there is an established market for your product, you’ve got the basis for building a profitable barter opportunity.

Stress that you seek to trade for retail value and not necessarily the discounted price that the furniture dealer may be selling the furniture for. Dealing on a retail or suggested retail basis is an excellent way to effect most trades because of markup. Most retailers have a minimum of 100%, and oftentimes up to 300%, at full suggested retail value.

When you come to him offering to trade $8,000 worth of air-conditioning equipment for an equal dollar value of retail furniture, at full list price, the dealer immediately sees the opportunity of making that 300% markup on the transaction.

A very important secret to exchange transactions: whenever you require something right now, and the person or company you are trying to trade with doesn’t need or want to avail themselves of your firm’s goods or services right away, don’t let the deal slip away. Offer the prospective trader this option: Tell him he can have unlimited time to take your goods or services and that he may assign the credit you are offering him to anyone else he may designate. Now you have created rational and persuasive reasons for him to exchange with you. If he knows he uses approximately $2,000 worth of air-conditioning services a year, if he understands he can “buy” these services for you at 35 cents on the dollar, and if he realizes he can pay for this air-conditioning with dollars he’s already tied up in slow-moving furniture, he comes out smelling like a rose. 

An astute business person would jump at that chance. Any person who would normally take the 2% early payment discount on an invoice should jump at the chance to pick up a 66% discount just for entering into a trade with you. Point these things out if he still resists the idea of barter.

Some ground rules to follow:

1. Insist on assignability for any item or service you ever receive a credit for. 
2. Never try to trade your goods at anything less than retail value. Remember, the higher the valuation you place on the goods you trade, the greater the buying advantage.

The single most valuable technique for the creative barterer to master is the fine art of triangulation. The astute practitioner can make up to 50 percent more barter deals and achieve net profits that my exceed 200 percent of the traditional yields that basic trade deals produce. Triangulation is the use of three separate transactions (or more) to achieve your ultimate barter objective.

Become a middleman and benefit from infinite leveraging via barter by using other people’s money. 

1. Approach a number of people in varied businesses and ask them if they’d be willing to trade their goods for other goods they want or need. You’ll put the deal together for them for either a commission of 30 percent of face value, payable in credits, or for a 15 percent cash commission.
2. Get a written assignment of a specific credit amount that they will trade for an equal value of acceptable merchandise, stipulating the aforementioned commission arrangement. Once you’ve contacted a couple of dozen businesses, you’re ready to trade. 
3. Approach various businessmen, and tell them that you control a specified dollar amount of such and such an item, which you’d like to trade for an equal dollar volume of their items. Tell them that if they’re interested in making such a trade, you’ll do it for a commission equal to 30 percent of the face value in credits, or 15 percent in cash.

Breakage represents the barter certificates you issue when you trade with someone that are never used. A certain percentage of all barter credits issue; if they have an expiration date (which I recommend), will not be used.

In a weak economy, the opportunities to profit through barter transactions are nearly limitless. Barter is not only recession proof – it actually thrives and works better in a tight-money economy.

How to get started with barter & triangulation: 

1. Make a list of all the products your business makes, sells or markets. Make special note of excess goods, materials, equipment, inventory, capacity, space, technology, access, etc. your business no longer needs or doesn’t fully use. 
2. That list is on the left hand side of the page. 
3. On the right hand side, make a list of all key vendors you regularly buy goods from to see if any might be interested in directly trading with you for their products. Or for a portion of the cost you pay for them. 
4. Add the names of your current suppliers’ competitors who might be even more eager to initially trade with you for product as a means to start a business relationship with your company. 
5. Below that list, make a third list of companies with whom you might be able to triangulate for goods. See if there is any company to whom you’d like to start selling your products who would also trade whatever they make or sell in order to start a relationship.
6. Write down who you could either sell or trade those items to for things you or your business needs or wants. 
7. Go wild with possibilities. Try putting a few small, easy trades together at first to get comfortable with it. Then with time keep expanding your level of trading.

Leave A Message After The Beep 

The single most important strategy you can use to maximize the value of all the other strategies is to communicate on a regular basis with everyone who contributes, or ever will contribute, in any way to your business success. It’s the secret to keeping and growing clients.

A post-purchase follow-up incorporating your USP and guarantees is vital, regardless of how frequently you “back end” or resell to that client.

The more people you talk with, network with, develop a relationship with, the more opportunities and insights you will have.

Somewhere Over The Rainbow 

Having a reachable goal is more important to your success and financial prosperity than almost anything else you do. Once you have a goal, reverse engineer the exact steps, accomplishments, benchmarks, timelines and methods you need to follow and set. 

Know your starting point and where you’re trying to get to. This applies to practically everything in life and business.

Your Never Ending Success 

If a concept cannot or does not seem to be directly applicable to you, don’t reject it immediately. Ask yourself: “How might I adapt all or part of that process to what I do?”

The only limit to your income is how much you believe is enough.

Any business can be boiled down to a two-step process: 

• Getting prospects or leads into your business 
• Converting them to paying customers